The LaTin american LefT’s mandaTe free-market Policies and issue Voting in new democracies

T new millennium has ushered in leftist governments across Latin america. With the election of fernando Lugo as Paraguay’s president in april 2008, every country in south america except colombia and Peru had elected a left-of-center president during the prior decade. in central america, el salvador, Guatemala, and nicaragua also elected left-leaning presidents, and mexico’s 2006 election saw a leftist candidate lose by just half a percentage point.1 Observers have interpreted the electoral success of left-of-center presidential candidates as everything from a sign of electorates’ wishes for the “final unraveling of the so-called Washington consensus”2 to an endorsement of free trade.3 still others have argued that Latin america’s “left turn” does not have roots in economic policy per se but rather in economic performance, stemming from a raft of anti-incumbent votes cast against right-of-center incumbents who presided over sluggish economic growth as the twentieth century ended.4